


Blood: It's What's Inside Of You!

by killdoll



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Consensual Blood Drinking, Human/Vampire Relationship, M/M, urbex, will i EVER get tired of describing old abandoned buildings? science so far says NO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 02:16:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14661270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killdoll/pseuds/killdoll
Summary: When Suzaku goes looking for Arthur in an old abandoned mansion in the woods, he ends up finding a lot more than he bargained for. / Vampire AU. Lelouch/Suzaku.





	Blood: It's What's Inside Of You!

**Author's Note:**

> This oneshot is dedicated to my friend Vela, who likes vampires! Thank you for always being such a positive and supportive presence in my life! I love you!
> 
> It's MAY, and it's getting nice and hot outside where I live! Enjoy the totally out-of-season vampires, everybloody! Ψ(｀▽´)Ψ
> 
> (P. S., I don't read much vampire fiction— at all, really— so this might be a totally tropealicious cliché-fest. I'm sorry if it is!)

Suzaku is a good boy who doesn’t trespass. But it’s a cold night in October, and Arthur is missing, and it’s a burned-out house in the middle of the woods. It’s nailed shut, it’s spraypainted up, it’s wooden boards sagging from the walls; the last time anyone lived here was 1986. It was a stately old Victorian once but after a fire ate it up inside it was abandoned and over the decades it’s sunken to rot, the stained-glass windows knocked out, the garden long overgrown with thick lush horrible weeds, dandelions and tall crabgrass, goosegrass and wild chamomile buzzing with flies and yes, even the odd wild sunflower growing up straight and tall, the golden raintree planted by the edge of the property swollen to leviathan proportions, its tangled, overgrown root system upending the front yard in brown chunks of clay, the front gate rusted through so thoroughly the latch has fallen off and sunk into the ocean of underbrush below, the marble fountain run dry and filled with years of dead leaves, streaks of black dirt tracing tearpaths down the face of the gleeful cherub pirouetting naked from the decoration surrounding the pump, offering up water from an empty ampoule; a carpet of fallen pine needles and detritus of miscellaneous origin paints the slumped-in roofs and shutters the color of rust and dried blood, and the moon lights it up all silver and eerie. The house has become a honeyhive for local vandals, and amateur paintings, poems, and pithy sayings scream from its walls both inside and out. A caricature of the evil eye is smeared above the front door in blue and white.

Suzaku is a good boy who doesn’t trespass. But Arthur shot off through the back gate and into the tree line behind Suzaku’s suburban home after some bird or squirrel half an hour ago, and Suzaku’s worried sick. Despite the fact that it’s a school night, he grabs warm clothes and a flashlight, yells to his mother that he’s leaving to look for the cat, and sets off into the woods calling Arthur’s name and kissing the air. He’s bundled up in a scarf and a thick green coat, and still he feels chilled as he tries to stick to the rough footpath that winds through the dark forest. Leaves crunch under his feet. He doesn’t really go out back here, ever, as the neighborhood park is much better for running, and so he doesn’t know his way around. He’d go home— at their other house Arthur had been an outdoor cat, and he’d disappeared over nights before, only to return home purring the next morning to the cranking of the can opener— but Suzaku and his family moved recently to the area, which is far more rural than Suzaku is used to, and Suzaku can’t stop imagining Arthur snatched up by a hungry hawk or owl this late at night and this far out in the woods. He pulls his coat more snugly around his body. “Arthur,” he calls again. The yellow disc of light from the torch swoops along the path, a rescue helicopter sounding the depths with its searchlight. No response.

Suzaku is a good boy who doesn’t trespass. But ten minutes into his search, when he comes up on the big, old, abandoned house, something tells him Arthur is inside.

If Suzaku had grown up in the area, he would have heard the urban legends that proliferated around the house, ghost girls with dripping eyelashes and ghastly pale bloodmouthed haunts. But this is not the town where he grew up. Suzaku grew up in a town near the sea where it always rained and he played inside every day with a sickly little boy named Lelouch until they were best friends and Suzaku didn’t mind. So he hadn’t even known there was an abandoned house out in the woods behind his home before he finds it there. So he has no context for what it is he’s seeing, none at all.

Suzaku’s love of Arthur will always outweigh his fear of ghosts. But although he’ll never admit it, Suzaku isn’t very good with ghosts, and if Arthur hadn’t been in danger, and Suzaku had known the ghastly tales that children in town whispered at sleepovers about the place, he would have turned right around and resumed his search for Arthur off the property. He would never have turned sideways to slink through a gap in the dilapidated fence and circled around the back of the house to look for a way in, would never have spotted the window over a window-box full of cigarette butts with a fist-sized hole punched through its dust-covered glass. He would never have thrust his hand through to undo the latch from the inside and open it. 

His flashlight pours into the room. Except for a single singed armchair that hunches in the corner like a goblin, the room is empty of furniture, all of the good stuff taken in waves long ago, first by flame, then by looters. Char from the antique fire climbs the walls with its memory. Beer and soda cans and popcorn bags cover the ground, and as Suzaku takes his first, hesitant steps into the room, he distinctly sees the silver gleam of a Pop-Tart wrapper. His flashlight beam reflects off two somethings— the eyes of a rat, scurrying away. A big anarchy symbol has been painted in black on a stripped wall, a runnily encircled A. There’s a particularly hard gust of wind, and the hairs stand up on the back of Suzaku’s neck as the rafters swoosh and creak in rhythm overhead. The years have warped the skeleton of the house from the inside out into something deranged, syphilitic.

“Arthur?” Suzaku calls, thinking that he’s going to make sure Arthur isn’t here and then get going. Putting aside how bad he is with the supernatural and approaching things from a clearly rational standpoint, he tells himself, there are likely all sorts of unsavory types squatting here, judging by the fresh garbage and the strange poems sprayed onto the walls.  _ HE HACKS THE PROGRAMS OF THE MATRIX IN ZION,  _ screams one.  _ I AM INVISIBLE THATS WHY  _ is all that remains of another. But the thought of Arthur getting into the hands of a bona fide creep just spurs Suzaku on harder. He can’t let that happen! Finding nothing in the first room, he crosses the grave of garbage and makes his way into what seems to be a sort of central room.

The second floor is visible from the first, ringed with an old balustrade missing several posts, and a hole in the roof lets silver moonlight pool in the center of the floor. It’s not nearly as dark in here as the other room; the moon is full tonight, and Suzaku can almost turn his flashlight off. There’s more writing, this time on the wall directly in front of him, and this one catches Suzaku’s eye because it’s written in... cursive? 

There is a scurrying motion from the second floor.

Suzaku’s light swings up like a pendulum. “Hello?” he calls. There’s no way it’s a trick of the dark; he’s certain he just saw someone move. They looked human, too. “Is anyone up there?”

Nothing. 

If Suzaku cared more about his own wellbeing and less about his cat’s, he’d leave now. But he presses forward.

Maybe he’s just imagining things. Right now, he has to get a layout of the house so that he knows how to search. He heads for the center of the room— there it is again! A shadow just barely out of Suzaku’s range of sight slips from one room to another in the barely visible second floor.

Well, maybe it’s Arthur. Tightening his checkered scarf around his neck, Suzaku takes off in pursuit, clicking his tongue and calling Arthur’s name. He finds a set of stairs in the northwest corner of the room. They’re patently unsafe, but that doesn’t stop Suzaku, who takes two steps in a bound and soon finds himself safe (or safe enough) on the second story. 

The upstairs is silent and dusty. There’s less garbage than the first floor, but more leaves and pine needles. Here, much closer to the hole in the roof, Suzaku can hear an owl hoot from outside, followed by the eerie stillness of the night. Suzaku gazes up at the night sky sprayed with a thick vein of stars, crescent moon hanging in the black like a rib. It’s actually quite beautiful. But he can’t afford to be getting distracted now, so he regains his wits about him and heads for the room he saw the strange figure move into.

Suzaku’s flashlight takes the room from left to right. In the corner, there’s a big, heavy vanity table, covered in multiple layers of dust, with cosmetics and an old wooden hairbrush laid out on it exactly as they had been left so many decades ago. Then there’s a weirdly shaped coathanger. Then a French door with a window, showing that it leads out onto a small balcony, though the balcony appears to have been grown over with trees. In the middle of the room, there’s a table low to the floor, and next to—

Oh. Person. That coathanger was a person.

He freezes, and then in a long, slow sweep the flashlight goes back around. In the interval, the silhouette doesn’t move at all. Suzaku’s heart is pounding, his instincts and common sense for once in chorus, both screaming  _ Get out!,  _ but his body doesn’t listen. The person is turned away from Suzaku, faceless as a chess piece, and Suzaku’s instincts tell him that the person was sleeping standing up, even though that’s... an odd thing to be doing. Or, possibly, waiting to be found.

They’re wearing nice clothes, Suzaku realizes, a sleek-fitting long black coat belted against the autumnal chill of the night. They have their hands in their pockets. When the light lands on them it takes them a moment to react; they visibly tense up as if caught in the middle of something, though they don’t appear to have been doing much of anything at all. It freezes Suzaku’s blood the way the unnatural way they slowly turn their head, almost mechanically, android-like, certainly not human, and so once he can finally see the person’s face, it takes Suzaku a while to process the hollow cheeks, rice-white skin, and... wait. No way.

“Lelouch?”

The person freezes. “Suzaku?”

It’s as if two pins come into place and stick them to the ground, and they’re stuck there staring at each other while in silence something slowly crackles to life between their eyes. 

Suzaku’s childhood returns to him: the two of them like catfish on their bellies in Lelouch’s room, thunder rumbling outside, eating mandarin slices off a china plate, the bright shiny fourth-grade mathematics textbook (the one with the illustrations of foxes and lions) spread open on the floor, Lelouch teaching Suzaku how to add fractions. Indoor ice cream cones. Lelouch’s strange, pale family. Nunnally coming in with an origami object she had made to show the boys. A crane or a frog or a heart or a box or a star. Suzaku still holds loose change in a carefully folded blue gingham-printed paper box Nunnally had given him from back then, keeps it on his desk. How when he first met Lelouch, Lelouch didn’t play well with other children, and people didn’t like Suzaku because he was hardheaded and mean, but as outcast comrades they took school by storm. 

Lelouch’s red rainboots! The clear umbrella with green froggies that Suzaku carried when he walked down the street to Lelouch and Nunnally’s. How proud of himself he was when he finally became big enough of a boy to go there by himself. He remembers bubble baths from being caught out in the rain. The  _ sleepovers _ . How they would brave the dark shores of eleven o’ clock, midnight together and feel like they’d mainlined mischief. Lelouch and Nunnally’s au pair, Sayoko, teaching them that you could make ‘smores in the microwave, standing shoulder to shoulder in wonder to watch marshmallows balloon and shrink like blown-up popcorn bags in the square lantern of the radio oven. 

Though they were rare in the rainy town where they had lived as boys, there were sunny days, too. But Lelouch’s weak constitution and congenital sensitivity to sunlight meant that he wasn’t quite fit for the rougher outdoor play that Suzaku liked. Which was fine. The fact that there was so much to do without moving your body was knowledge that Suzaku wouldn’t have if he’d never met Lelouch. It felt like a special secret from the world. Suzaku remembers sitting in the cloakroom with Lelouch and Nunnally, tying his running shoes (the cool ones with the neon green stripes), while the siblings slathered sunscreen on each other. Nunnally went to a special school. Lelouch went to the same school as Suzaku, but he couldn’t stay out in the sun too long, or eat certain things, or go certain places, and whenever he visited Suzaku’s house, he always knocked on the door and waited to be invited in, even though his family never locked their doors and made sure he knew he was welcome anytime— which Suzaku’s parents just took as him being polite. 

Lelouch would always have some things that made him a little bit different from other people, but Suzaku never considered it any different from being friends with, say, Tony who had asthma, or Cheryl who was deaf, or Blakeley who was allergic to bees. Or Nunnally, who couldn’t walk, or see. Although Suzaku wasn’t supposed to know, although it was supposed to be a secret to everybody, Lelouch once entrusted him with the true nature of his family’s curse after making Suzaku swear he’d never tell.

And that was how Suzaku came to learn that his first and best friend was a vampire, born one into a family of vampires. It didn’t bother him at all. He didn’t understand why Lelouch thought it would. Before anything else, they were still friends.

And then when Suzaku was fourteen, his family had moved away for his father’s work. The three children waited until all the adults were gone, then sat in the living in a circle, held hands, and cried. Lelouch said that he wasn’t crying, but he was.

All of this comes back to Suzaku, dawning like warm, sweet tea in this empty, degenerating house.

He takes a step forward. “No way. It’s really you?”

“The one and only,” Lelouch replies, though there’s something crooked about his stance that’s strangely offputting for Suzaku. For the first time, Suzaku truly takes in how his childhood friend has changed. Lelouch has shot up like a weed; he’s lanky, gaunt, and thin, seeming (though it may be a trick of the setting) even paler than Suzaku remembers, with dark circles underneath his eyes. When he takes a step forward, Lelouch takes a step back. Neither of them acknowledge this verbally. 

But Suzaku is still ecstatic. “Are you serious?” He says in the tone of someone who can’t believe his luck. “Oh my God, what are the chances—”

Lelouch's half-moon smile, though still forced, widens the thinnest notch with what can only be genuine, helpless fondness, an emotion Suzaku recognizes on Lelouch’s features even now from back then, and he’s caught in the beam of Suzaku’s flashlight with empty hands. Suzaku forgets everything and charges headlong toward him. Lelouch startles into a “Wh— what are you  _ doing— _ ” before he’s rolled up in one genuine Suzaku Kururugi bear hug, arms pinned to his sides as Suzaku squeezes the breath from his lungs. With the limited mobility afforded his hands, he grabs tight onto the hem of Suzaku’s coat and doesn’t let go.

“I missed you,” Suzaku says in almost a whisper, face pressed against Lelouch’s cheek. It sounds raw, it sounds real. The tiniest bit of scruff lines Suzaku’s teenage jaw, just enough to make Lelouch shiver violently as it scrapes against his sensitive skin, and Lelouch stares up at the ceiling to avoid thinking about how Suzaku smells. The flashlight’s beam illuminates a tag on one of the rafters, the word  _ LOVESLAVE  _ in a calligraphic hand with wings and a halo.

“Missed you too.”

“I really, really missed you,” Suzaku says, still not pulling back (please pull back, Suzaku), “so, so much. I wished we’d never moved away.”

“I missed you too,” Lelouch repeats, a puff of laughter against Suzaku’s shoulder. Usually he was the eloquent one, but in this moment, he can’t find another way to say a feeling so simple and pure.

Suzaku lets Lelouch go, holding him out at arm’s length to examine him. Lelouch is skinny. Like, skinny-skinny. Like, maybe he hasn’t been eating enough, skinny.

“How’ve you been?”

“You probably won’t believe me if I tell you ‘same old, same old’, huh?” Lelouch says, managing a watery smirk. 

That’s right, Suzaku thinks; Lelouch must be seventeen by now. According to Lelouch, vampires born into his family don’t develop into fully-fledged vampires until around fifteen years of age. Before that, they’re capable of surviving off animal blood— human blood is actually too rich for a fledgeling, raises their cholesterol out the wazoo— their adult fangs haven’t come in yet, and a lot of their supernatural powers haven’t emerged. Suzaku looks at Lelouch’s smile to see if he can see his fangs. It’s difficult, in the lighting.

“How was teething?”

“It sucked,” Lelouch says, bringing his hand up to his jaw as if feeling pain at the mere memory. “I had a fever, I was out cold for days.”  Suzaku winces sympathetically. 

“What are you even doing here, anyway?” Suzaku asks. Suspicion flashes over his frame. “Wait... Lelouch, you’re not doing graffiti, are you?”

“What? Painting? Who? Me? Never,” says Lelouch. A forced, dry laugh fights its way out of his throat like bat wings. Suzaku’s eyes narrow, and Lelouch resolves to change the subject as quickly as possible. “I had no idea you were in this town— do you live here, now?”

“Yeah,” says Suzaku, and his eyes widen. “Wait, do  _ you  _ live here?”

“My family moved here last month,” says Lelouch, clearly in disbelief himself.

“No way,” says Suzaku, “oh man, that means we both live in the same town again!”

Lelouch’s face softens into something precious. “... Nunnally... will be very glad to see you again.”

They stand there for a while, living in the strange moment.

“I still don’t know why you’re in here in the first place,” Lelouch says. He smiles, and his teeth glint. “Up to some mischief?”   
  
“No!” says Suzaku, on the defensive. Then all the color drains out of his face. “Oh, no...” he says. “I was looking for Arthur...”   
  
“Arthur?”

“That’s right, you haven’t met him. He’s my cat—”

“Cat?” says Lelouch. “Is he black, with a lighter patch around his eye?”

“You’ve seen him?!”

“Just a few minutes ago. He went that way,” Lelouch says, pointing.

Sure enough, Arthur is there, in an adjacent room on the second floor. Suzaku calls his name in ecstatic relief, gathers him up into his arms. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” he tells him breathlessly, burying his nose in the top of Arthur’s head. Lelouch smiles fondly, watching the pair. 

A cold gust of wind rattles the frames of the house. Suzaku jumps, holding Arthur close to his chest.

“Are you afraid?”

“It’s not that I’m afraid,” Suzaku says. “Just... this place seems weird. Haunted. I guess. I’m glad it’s only you.”

Lelouch laughs. “I forgot, you always were bad with ghosts, weren’t you? Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”

“Ghosts aren’t real!”

Lelouch’s smile grows dangerously. “Then what about me?”

“You’re different,” says Suzaku, hurt, “you’ve— you’ve always been different. Don’t you know that?” There’s no way Lelouch would ever hurt him.

Lelouch looks away, and there’s an odd, sad little smile on his face. “How I wish I were, Suzaku,” he says.

Suzaku’s about to ask him what he means by that, but Lelouch promptly takes a seat on the floor. Because the movement is sudden and it’s unlike the neatfreak Lelouch to sit down on garbage, Suzaku says “Whoa, are you okay?” and steps towards him. Lelouch starts to shake his head, then nods, his head drooping, his face invisible behind his curtain of hair. He knits his fingers together and rests his forehead atop them.

“I just need to rest,” he says, his voice shaking. “I’ll be fine in a moment.”

“Are you sure?” Suzaku says. His tone of voice makes it clear that he isn’t convinced. He squats down to be on eye level with Lelouch, though Lelouch’s eyes are still hidden from him. “You’re acting weird. Do you need to see a doctor or something? I can take—”

Suzaku stops talking. It’s not a sudden halt, more of a gradual trailing off. This is because at first his brain does not comprehend what it is seeing.

Some kind of veneer has dropped, some kind of facade. Ablaze. Lelouch’s eyes are on  _ fire _ . Red, redder than anything Suzaku has ever seen, two glowing coals sunk into the night-darkened hollow of his face. Part of Suzaku that remains detached comments on a remembered conversation from years ago, about how vampires’ eyes burn like this when they’re starving. The rest of Suzaku forgets how to breathe.

“This is a bad time,” says Lelouch. For the first time since he met Lelouch again, Suzaku is genuinely scared, not of any ghosts or of Lelouch but for Lelouch, for how breathy and raspy his voice has just become, the way he’s panting out each word. Lelouch squeezes his eyes shut and covers them, turning his face away. “I’m sorry, Suzaku, I’m so goddamn hungry. I don’t trust myself around you right now. Please leave. Come back in—”

Suzaku isn’t leaving. He reaches up to take hold of Lelouch’s wrists and pull them down, but he can’t, and for a moment he’s surprised at how strong Lelouch has become. “Why haven’t you eaten?” Suzaku asks. The question is accusatory, the  _ why haven’t you been taking care of yourself  _ latent beneath the spoken words. Lelouch barks out a bitter laugh as Suzaku lets go of him, frowning.

“Can’t. Our family lost one of our sources of Supply recently,” Lelouch starts to explain, face still hidden in his hands. Suzaku knows from growing up with Lelouch that a Supplier is a human who, for whatever reason— money, usually, but some people seem to genuinely enjoy it— allows vampires to feed off of them. Usually, because the human body cannot produce blood infinitely, there’s an exclusive relationship between the Supplier and one vampire or one small group of vampires, and often a special contract is signed by both parties, usually with carefully structured schedules for feedings and complicated words like “consent” and “restitution”. The contracts can’t be brought into court, obviously, but it’s a ceremony, a symbol of trust and symbiosis between feeder and feed. As one might imagine, relationships like these are hard to come by, so much so that many vampires instead choose to take unwilling victims. “Schneizel drank them dry.”

“What?! Why would he do that?!”

“He said it was an accident—”

“That bastard,” hisses Suzaku, his hands involuntarily tightening on Lelouch’s wrists.

Lelouch laughs again. He’s good at it, this kind of sarcastic, angry laugh that has nothing at all to do with mirth. There’s a long list of reasons why Suzaku never liked Schneizel. “So we only have one person now, and really we need two. It’s either Nunnally or I who gets to drink. Until we find another one, we have to make do.”

“You poor thing,” Suzaku says. He’s taken to idly stroking Lelouch’s wrist with his thumbs. Arthur meows, close enough that Suzaku can tell he isn’t wandering off again. He loves Arthur, but right now his attention is all for Lelouch. “How long have you not been eating properly?”

“A few weeks,” Lelouch croaks. It hangs in the air like a death sentence. Suzaku goes silent as he thinks about what he’s going to do.

When Suzaku releases Lelouch’s hands, Lelouch looks up. Suzaku stands. “I really need you to leave,” Lelouch is saying. “It’s not that I’m not happy to see you again, I truly am, but you’re going to have to wait a while because— what are you doing?”

Suzaku is untying his scarf from around his neck and pulling it off in quick, jerky movements. “You’re hungry, right? You can drink from me. I don’t mind.”

Lelouch is so stunned he’s actually speechless; so many thoughts fight to be voiced all at once they beat each other to death and die in his throat. What Suzaku doesn’t know is how  _ delicious  _ he smells; Lelouch has never smelled anything like it. A vampire’s scent is extremely acute, especially a hungry vampire’s, and Lelouch has had Suzaku’s scent since he entered the building, since he was a hundred meters out. Lelouch was drawn to him. What Suzaku doesn’t know is that Lelouch has been fighting to suppress his hunger since Suzaku walked in, that Lelouch would like nothing more than to rip Suzaku apart and gorge himself, that he’s trembling with the very desire to. But he can’t. Mustn’t. Not Suzaku. Come, Lelouch, you can’t be so hungry you’ve forgotten who your first and best friend is! Suzaku of all people, Suzaku pure and beautiful and good? Suzaku, who as a child you swore to yourself you’d never hurt?

Suzaku, willing and inviting Lelouch to dine on him?

Lelouch’s pink tongue peeks over white fangs, sweeping to the side and hiding again in an almost invisible micromovement, and Suzaku can see him giving in. 

“Just a little bit.” 

“Yeah,” says Suzaku. Lelouch takes a step toward him. A cold wind blows between them, priming Suzaku’s throat with gooseflesh. Suzaku holds as still as he can, trying not to shiver, not knowing if it’s from the cold or something else. “Just a little.” Lelouch is standing, at long last, in front of him. His hand comes up to hold Suzaku’s jaw, his thumb covering the slightly darkened patch of skin underneath Suzaku’s eye. Lelouch stares at him for a moment in mute wonder.

Lelouch has the most incredible eyes, Suzaku thinks. It’s not just right now, when they’re crimson and ablaze in this dark room of this abandoned house. Suzaku has always thought that. They have the most beautiful color, a true, rare violet that Suzaku’s never seen anywhere else, and in the right light flecks of the iris sparkle like the jagged chunk of fluorite Suzaku once held up to the light in the third grade on a fieldtrip in the giftshop of a gemstone quarry. There’s something about the way Lelouch’s long, dark eyelashes— Marianne always said they were “wasted on a boy”, which Suzaku believes couldn’t be further from the truth— are shaped, how they frame his eyes and cast shadows on his face. As a child, Suzaku never understood these feelings he might have always had for his best friend, but at age seventeen, here, in the dark, peering into Lelouch’s eyes at his most unprotected and raw, something inside Suzaku slides and clicks into place. Or maybe it had always been there.

“It’ll hurt,” Lelouch says, dragging him back from behind his eyes. Suzaku nods, mutely. “There will be pain at first, but a vampire’s saliva—” Lelouch breaks off and cringes at the phrase, as though it’s vulgar, which for some reason makes Suzaku’s heartbeat trip— “contains endorphins which, in humans, act as a heavy analgesic and may also induce a certain euphoria.” While Lelouch is talking, his gaze trails down to Suzaku’s pulse point, then, as soon as he catches himself, flies back up to Suzaku’s eyes. He fidgets uncomfortably. “It lasts for a short time afterward, then wears off.”

Suzaku just nods along with his explanation, not trusting himself to speak. 

“Depending on the person,” Lelouch continues, “if you are consistently fed upon by vampires, it’s possible for your body to become dependent on those endorphins. Addicted. I don’t want to...”

Suzaku just shakes his head, and Lelouch trails off. He brings his own hand up to touch Lelouch’s face, stroking the soft skin of his cheek with the inside of his thumb. He never really paid much attention to it when they were kids, but wow, Lelouch’s skin is incredibly soft. He kind of wants to never stop touching it, but that would be awkward. He’s lucky Lelouch is allowing him even this.

Suzaku’s voice is oddly rough when he says “Don’t make me wait.”

There’s an animalistic growl— “ _ Suzaku _ ”— and in the same instant Suzaku’s head is being turned to the side and it’s as if all the resolve Lelouch had to be as slow and gentle as possible vanishes straight into thin air. The pain comes quick, Suzaku cries out, his broken voice quieting Lelouch makes soothing movements across his shoulder with his free hand. Lelouch’s mouth is hot on Suzaku. He feels the pain as Lelouch’s teeth leave him, and whimpers, and Lelouch strokes him again, a tender apology, before he moves on to sucking. Suzaku’s hands grab hold of Lelouch’s shirt and curl into fists as something warm breathes itself to life in the chambers of his gut.

Suzaku can feel Lelouch’s shaky, relieved, full exhale against his skin at the first swallow. Lelouch tilts his head for a better angle, taking his mouth away, pressing his lips to Suzaku’s skin again. 

As Lelouch drinks, Suzaku can feel the tension leaving both of their bodies. Once they settle in, it feels like the most natural thing in the world for Suzaku to reach up and gently tangle his fingers in Lelouch’s hair. It’s cold. Lelouch is cold, but somehow, having him close is not unpleasant. The gesture is pure guidance and affection, like helping a puppy to nurse. 

“There you go,” Suzaku whispers, stroking Lelouch’s head comfortingly. “Much better, right?” Without taking his mouth from Suzaku’s neck, Lelouch answers with a wordless sob of relief, sucking harder when Suzaku tells him it’s okay. 

It feels good.  As Lelouch continues to feed, the pain for Suzaku subsides, replaced with a drunk, heady pleasure, a desire to stay and let Lelouch drink from him as long as he wants, maybe forever. Suzaku brings his other arm up to wrap around Lelouch’s middle in a sort of hug, pulling him closer, and to anyone looking in, the two would have looked like a perfectly normal young couple sharing a perfectly normal embrace.

_ So soft,  _ Suzaku thinks, fingertips in the sleek black hair.

*******

When Lelouch tears himself away and staggers backward, hand pressed over his mouth, his eyes are violet again, dull in comparison in the shifting shades of dark blue that dapple the night. “Oh God,” he says, to himself rather than Suzaku, “oh God, that was good.” He turns around, hands over his mouth, to compose himself. 

The enormity of the electricity shooting through Lelouch’s veins even now is inexpressible. Suzaku tastes  _ good,  _ better than anything Lelouch has ever tasted; animalistically, far from his usual fastidiousness, Lelouch smears the bits of Suzaku left on his chin up into his mouth, is unable to keep his voice down as the taste melts and spreads on his tongue. The best he can do is try to muffle the desperate, helpless whimpers of pleasure with his palms as he licks them clean. Then Suzaku’s blood is all inside Lelouch, and there’s nothing left but the memory; he’ll dream of it, he thinks, tasting Suzaku over and over in his sleep.

The chemicals in Lelouch’s spit make Suzaku a little warm and sleepy, and he blinks, taking a moment to realize that Lelouch has left his side. He reaches up to the wound Lelouch left; it’s no longer pulsing blood. He wonders how Lelouch made that work. When Lelouch turns back around, his mouth is wiped and his breathing is even. His eyes are focused and the bags underneath them are gone; overall he looks a thousand times better than he did before Suzaku allowed him to drink. Suzaku walks over to him and nuzzles into his shoulder.

“Wha— what are you doing,” Lelouch says for the second time that night, and if he weren’t a vampire the blood would be rising high in his cheeks. His physiological predilection against blushing had saved him many times as a child. As it is, he merely tenses up with embarrassment, though not so much as to suggest that Suzaku’s touch is unwelcome.

“Warm,” is all Suzaku answers, pulling Lelouch close. Lelouch lets out a puff of breath.

“I’m not warm, idiot. I’m undead,” Lelouch tells him, but he holds still and lets Suzaku stay close to him anyway. 

“Mm, you caught me. Just wanna be close to you,” Suzaku says, and Lelouch crinkles his brow and smiles, hopeless and fond. 

“That’s the endorphins,” Lelouch says. “It’s called the afterbite effect. It’s meant to encourage bonding and a symbiotic relationship between vampire and human.”

“Okay, it’s the endorphins,” Suzaku says. “Still wanna be close to you.” 

“I never said you couldn’t, idiot,” Lelouch murmurs, running his fingers through Suzaku’s hair.

They stand like that for quite some time, the moonlight pouring down onto them as they hold each other. In a corner of the room, Arthur bats around an empty soup can, the metallic rattle like a baby’s echoing throughout the room.

“We should be getting back,” Suzaku mutters after quite some time. “My parents are probably getting worried about me.”

“Mm,” Lelouch says. “I suppose you could say the same for me.” He steps back, denying Suzaku his embrace, and Suzaku puffs up a little, but survives. 

“Which direction is your house?” Suzaku asks, and it’s a disappointment when Lelouch points in the opposite direction from his, but in the end it’s okay; there will be plenty of time in the future, to see each other. They have each other again, and this time nothing will take them apart. As casually as anything, they enter each others’ names into their phones, and then, with promises to text each other and arrange another meeting soon, it’s finally time to say goodbye.

“Lelouch,” says Suzaku, stopping in his tracks just a moment after setting off. Lelouch stops, turns his head to show he’s listening. Suzaku gathers Arthur up closer to his chest.

“Until you find another source of Supply,” Suzaku begins. “Until you find another source of Supply, if you get hungry... call me again.”

It’s not blushing, but it’s something like blushing, and if Lelouch weren’t a vampire, he would be blushing.

“I’ll think about it,” he says.

“You’d better,” Suzaku says.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Dreamwidth @ [killdoll](https://killdoll.dreamwidth.org/) if you'd like to get in touch!


End file.
